MAUROZONTA THE ROLE OF AVICENNA AND OF ISLAMIC 'AVICENNISM' IN THE 14TH-CENTURY JEWISH DEBATE AROUND PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION1 he role played by Avicenna's philosophy and, in particular, by the T Corpus Avicennianum in late-medieval Jewish philosophy has been never examined as a whole2 - and, in any case, a rather limited number of studies on particular aspects of it exists. European Jewish philosophy in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries has been traditionally regarded as over­ whelmingly influenced not by Avicenna, but by Averroes. In facts, the list of Hebrew translations of philosophical texts made during these cen­ turies in Spain, Provence and Italy shows that, while the Corpus Averro­ icum was almost completely rendered into Hebrew, only some fragments of Avicenna's philosophical works were quoted and translated by Jewish scholars.3 Here follows a survey of the hitherto detected total or partial Hebrew translations of Avicenna's authentic philosophical writings. In the case of al-Sifo' (The Cure), some chapters from the /sagoge and the Prior Analytics were inserted by Todros Todrosi of Aries in his 'phi­ losophical anthology' (dated 1334); a brief quotation from the Physics is found in the 'physical' section of the same anthology; another brief quo­ tation from the De caelo is found in the commentary on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, the Moreh ha-moreh, written in 1280 by the Spanish Jewish philosopher Shem Tov lbn Falaquera; from the section on Minerals and Meteorology, some brief references are found in Samuel lbn Tibbon's 'annotated translation' of Aristotle's Meteorologica, written in 1210, in lbn Tibbon's Treatise on 'Let the waters be collected' (Ma 'amar be-yiqqawu ha-mayim) and in lbn Falaquera's cited work; from the section on Animals, two quotations are found in the fifth book of I - The original version of this paper was read at the Centre d'Histoire des Sciences et de la Philosophie Arabes et Medievales (C.N.R.S., Paris) on October 23th, 1998. I would like to thank the members of the Centre for their suggestions, which I have in­ corporated into the definitive version. Finally, a partially different version of it is forthcoming in the Proceedings of the International Colloquium "Avicenna and his Heritage", held in Leuven and Louvain~La-Neuve on September, 8th-l Jib, 1999. 2 - There are only very brief surveys on this point: see e.g. s. v. «Avicenna» (Sh. Pines), in: Encyclopaedia Judaica, III, Jerusalem, 1971, p. 955-959. 3 - See Tamani, G. & Zonta, M., Aristoteles Hebraicus. Versioni, commenti e com­ pendi de/ Corpus Aristotelicum nei manoscritti ebraici de/le biblioteche italiane, Venezia (Eurasiatica, 46), 1997, p. 29-52; cfr. also Steinschneider, M., Die hebrai­ schen Uebersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher, Berlin, 1893, p. 279-286. OM, n.s. XIX (LXXX), 3, 2000 648 MAUROZONTA Ibn Falaquera's philosophical encyclopaedia, the Opinions of the Phi­ losophers, De 'ot ha-filosofim, probably written around 1270; from the section on the De anima (probably, the most famous part of The Cure, well-known also to the medieval Latin tradition), some rather long quota­ tions are found in Falaquera's works, in particular in his Book of the Soul (Se/er ha-nefesh), as well as in the sixth book of the Opinions of the Phi­ losophers and in the commentary on Maimonides; in the latter, some brief quotations from the Metaphysics of The Cure have been discovered. Also the arithmetical and geometrical sections of The Cure were translated into Hebrew, but we do not know when and by whom.4 So, apparently, the bulkiest philosophical encyclopaedia by Avicenna still extant was not so widely used by late-medieval Jewish scholars. · The situation is not substantially different in the case of Avicenna's 'minor' encyclopaedia, al-Nagiit (The Salvation): before 1300, only Ibn Falaquera seems to have known it directly; in facts some substantial quo­ tations of it are found in his Book on the Soul, and I have recently identi­ fied two passages from the beginning of the logic of The Salvation in Ibn Falaquera's 'popular' encyclopaedia, the Book of the Seeker (Se/er ha­ mevaqqesh), written in 1263.5 After 1300, we have a Hebrew translation of the parts of The Salvation devoted to physics and metaphysics, made by Todros Todrosi (one is wondering why he did not translate also the section on logic: maybe because he had already exposed Avicenna's logic from The Cure in his 'anthology'), and two brief (and very vague) refer­ ences - one cannot even speak of real 'quotations' -to passages from the metaphysics of The Salvation are found in Moses Narboni's commentary on al-Gaza.lI's Maqii~id al-faliisifah (The Intentions of the Philosophers) - a work that, as I will try to show, might have contributed to the knowl­ edge of Avicenna's doctrines among Jews more than Avicenna's works themselves. Also Avicenna's Risiilahfi '1-naft (The Epistle on the Soul) was par­ tially translated into Hebrew by Falaquera in the second section of the eighth treatise of his encyclopaedia, and one cannot forget that this very text was one of the philosophical sources of the discussion on the soul found in Judah ha-Levi's Book of the Khazar (Hebrew Se/er ha-Kuzari). In any case, as for other works by Avicenna, the traces left in late­ medieval Hebrew literature are almost negligible: e.g., as I will explain later, only some brief quotations of the logical and physical sections of Avicenna's al-Isiiriit wa '1-tanbihiit (The Remarks and the Admonitions) are found in Todros Todrosi's writings. Of course, I exclude from this list 4 - See Levy, T., "Les Elements d'Euclide en hebreu (XIIle-XVIe siecles)", in: Pers­ pectives arabes et medievales sur la tradition scientifique et philosophique grecque, Hasnawi, A., Elamrani Jamal, A. & Aouad, M. (eds.), Leuven-Paris (Orientalia Lova­ niensia Analecta, 79), 1997, p. 79-94, esp. p. 80, n. 3-4. 5 - See Zonia, M., "Fonti antiche e medievali della logica ebraica nella Provenza del Trecento", in: Medioevo, XXIII (1997), p. 515-594, esp. p. 529, n. 40. .